F44 Arts and Crafts Secretaire designed by Mackie Hugh Baillie Scott

Arts and Crafts secretaire in oak with inlaid decoration of pewter, holy, ivory and ebony . Designed by M. H. Baillie Scott Made by the firm of J.P. White, The Pyghtle Works, Bedford. 1901
This piece of furniture is designed by one of Britain’s most celebrated Arts and Crafts architects Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott (1865-1945). It is pictured in the original J.P. White catalogue as No.1 out of approximately 120 designs.
This was Baillie Scott’s one and only attempt to produce a commercial range of furniture, everything before and after was to commission. It would seem now in retrospect that he was a little premature in his modernist designs as the piece from the Pyghtle Works is one of only a few pieces ever to be found, and this piece in particular is the first and only one known to exist, suggesting the British public found it a little too avant-garde. Its bold simple form shows that the designer was at a crucial and very confidant point in his career, having just completed the celebrated design work for the Grand Duke of Hesse. The design is true to the arts and crafts ethos with its large exposed dovetails top and bottom, the use of quarter sawn oak, the intarsia inlay being it’s only signature decoration and the use of the doors as the fall front supports. The use of the doors in this way was never very successful but was considered important enough for another designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh to included in a cabinet he designed in 1905. Pieces from this range are extremely rare, there are from memory only 3 pieces in the public domain, the first a three legged table in the Metropolitain New York, the second is a settle in Cheltenham Museum and the third is a clock in the Victoria and Albert in London.

For further information on Baillie Scott see..
www.bailliescott.com

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Price : £ POA

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